Tips for a standout portfolio
You’ve done the work, but are you standing out from the crowd? After over a decade reviewing countless portfolios and working with talented design students to create theirs, we’ve learned a thing or to when it comes to producing beautiful portfolios that help designers differentiate and earn great work.
It’s surprisingly easy to go wrong when it comes to portfolios, and even your presentation overall. Studios and brands are inundated with designers sending through their portfolios with hopes of securing coveted positions every single day. So if you’re not catching someone’s eye straight away, chances are it’s going to the bin faster than you can say “Hi, I’m…”.
Read on for our top tips in rising above the rest!
Via: Graphic Pear
Don’t be extra
Probably a saying I use an exorbitant amount and if you’ve ever been a student of mine, I’m sure it’s all too familiar to you! Designers are keen to show off their personalities in their portfolios and design the shit out of it. To stand out against your fellow designers, perhaps you should. Just make sure that your personal branding or the layout of your digital, printed or website folio isn’t detracting from the work you are asking someone to take a look at. Save the overly experimental layouts, multi-colour overlays and overuse of graphic elements for your project work and let your work be the hero in your portfolio. Tip: try a 75/50 rule — the piece of work should take up at least 75% of the image it is within and that image should at least take up 50% of the page.
Start and finish with your strongest work
Or more lovingly known as ‘The shit sandwich’. You want to catch someone’s attention with your best work going in and leave them with something equally great to finish on and be remembered by. Same goes with your website - start strong. As for the rest of your work, remember that it’s quality over quantity and you should order it according to what feels like a good pace. A meatier project with more applications or pages should be followed by a lighter one to reduce the overwhelm.
Create repetition
Unless there is a very good reason for it not to, your portfolio layout should follow an overall layout system so there is consistency felt throughout. Create a 4-5 variations in your inDesign master pages and use each one when the work best suits. Use a consistent grid and set rules for yourself as to how you’ll handle landscape images, portrait images and multiple images on one page. In addition to layout, keep typefaces consistent and hierarchy of headers, subheads and body copy. If you’re not already besties with inDesign paragraph and character styles - get acquainted!
Inform and intrigue, but don’t write a novel
Chances are someone is viewing your portfolio for the first time without you there. That means you’ll need introduction pages for projects (or project covers on websites) that create intrigue for the viewer to take a look through the project, as well as give enough information to know what they’re looking at. However, a potential employer or new client doesn’t need to know the childhood event that sparked your design concept or the names of your three cats. Keep it simple, create some interest, but save some of that awesome personality for the interview or first meeting.
Via : Ahmad Fakhry
Via: Jefferson Hack
Visualising and giving context
Ensure you are giving a project or a piece of work context wherever possible. A viewer should be able to look at a piece of work and know instantly if it’s a poster or an A5 flyer. It sounds simple but it’s so common for proportions to be misleading. If you have samples of the actual printed work you’ve produced, photograph it in a well, naturally-lit space, potentially with other elements around for scale.
If you do not have the work, or if it is a student brief that was never actually produced, mockups are your best friends. There are thousands of free and paid ones out there from great resources such as Graphic Pear, Creative Market, Graphic Burger, Mockup World, Envato Elements, and Behance. But remember, every other designer out there will be using the exact same mockups, so get creative. Get out there and take your own photographs. This can mean shooting blank business cards or photographing out and around the city for mockup opportunities. Either way, make sure the context you’re giving is relevant to the project.
Digital work is great to mockup, but animations go a long, long way to giving context. Use QuickTime Player to take a screen recording of a live website or use the screen recording function on your phone for an app. If the project isn’t yet live, no problem. Get those screens into a prototyping app. Invision is free and easy to use but you can now design and prototype in one place with programs like Sketch, Adobe XD and Figma. However, ensure to pair these with stills so the detail in your design can be appreciated.
Via: Graphic Pear
Via: Florian Markl
Tell the story
Think of a project as if it is a story from start to finish. Take the viewer on a bit of a journey from your initial idea through to your project in application. There are multiple ways of doing this. If it is a brand, think of it from the perspective of the consumer. Would they first come across the brand on social media? Show your post and stories designs first. Would they then next visit the website to make a purchase? Then perhaps experience the brand through packaging and printed material?
Setting up a project in this way not only holds the attention of the viewer better, but it will also help you talk through it more fluidly in person. Handy when those jittery nerves are running high!
Process process process
Employers do not just want to see the shiny, polished end results they want to know how you created the ideas behind it. Showing process will go a long way in showing you’re a designer with strong conceptual skills, not just a Mac monkey.
If it was a project you worked on as a part of a team, don’t try to gloss over this. Be clear as to what your role was in the creation of the project. You may be tempted to inflate this a little bit but it’s shows strong skills to be able to design within and contribute to a team.
Attention to detail
Showing you will pay attention to even the smallest details is paramount. Have a couple of your grammar police friends read through your portfolio for any errors, run through with fresh eyes before sending to anyone and please, please, please run a spell check.
Show some self–initiated work
Don’t be afraid to show off some of your self-initiated work, even if you worry it’s a bit experimental or doesn’t fit in with the rest of the portfolio. Chances are the work in your portfolio isn’t always the kind of design you love. That crazy, experimental stuff you do for fun in your spare time is what highlights who you truly are as a designer and what you’re really passionate about. And passion, my friend, is what will get you noticed.
Leave your thoughts in the comments below and good luck!